Bright e-Paper by transport of ink through a white electrofluidic imaging film

Abstract

Many of the highest performance approaches for electronic paper use voltage to reveal or hide dark pigments or dyes over a white pixel surface, and the reflectance of white pixels is lower than in real paper because the dark pigments or dyes can never be fully removed from the visible pixel area. Here, we introduce a re-designed approach for electronic paper that transposes coloured ink in front of or behind a white microfluidic film. Pixels can provide 490% reflective area and have demonstrated o15 ms switching for 150 pixels-per-inch resolution. This new approach is also the first of its kind for electrowetting-style displays by allowing non-aligned lamination fabrication, and is the first ever colourant-transposing pixel that eliminates the need for ink microencapsulation or pixel borders.

Cephalopod-inspired design of electro-mechano-chemically responsive elastomers for on-demand fluorescent patterning

“…To design these responsive soft material systems, various strategies have been exploited, such as embedding rigid light-emitting diodes into elastomeric substrates [3][4][5][6][7] , employing stretchable electro-luminescent polymers 1,8,9,11 and designing microfluidic networks filled with controlled pigment fluids 10,[12][13][14][15] . On the other hand, nature offers a drastically different strategy that enables soft skins of animals to spontaneously display versatile colours and fluorescence 10,16,17 .…”

Fluorimetric Mercury Test Strips with Suppressed “Coffee Stains” by a Bio-inspired Fabrication Strategy

“…Flat and clear glass substrates (72 × 24 mm2) were cleaned by fresh piranha solution of H 2 SO 4 :H 2 O 2  = 7:3 (Caution: piranha solution as a strong oxidant must be handled with extreme care) to activate the substrate surface, and then thoroughly washed in UP water to be further dried in nitrogen. Following that, those cleaned substrates were separately dipped into the hydrophobic HDS solutions of different percents in ethanol (0%, 0.10%, 1.0%, 2.0%, and 5.0%) to be reacted for 6 h at room temperature.…”

“…Up to date, porous papers as the cost-effective and green flexible materials have been extensively applied for the fabrication of high-performance electronics1, electronic paper (e-Paper) technologies2, and test trips345. Particularly, the paper-based test strips, typically known as glucose test strip3, pregnancy diagnostic strip4, and urine test strip5, have been widely employed for diverse medial analysis, due to that they are cheap, readily use, and disposable for the in-site fast analysis.…”

Screen printing insulator coatings for electrofluidic display devices

“…Electrofluidic elements, where fluids are manipulated on sub‐mm length scales, where capillary forces predominate over gravitational forces, are well suited for applications requiring high switching speed and low power. Electrofluidic displays have attracted a great deal of attention because of their high optical efficiency (brightness, paper‐likeness , low energy consumption), video speed , full colour , as well as enabling flexible displays . In addition, similar industrial production processes to mainstream LCD gives them a lower manufacturing cost .…”